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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has concocted another ethanol-related boondoggle -- a grant and loan guarantee program to promote the installation of "ethanol blender," or "flexible fuel," pumps at gas stations. The Obama administration intends to install 10,000 flexible fuel pumps nationwide within five years, in order to "give Americans a choice to purchase domestically produced renewable transportation fuels," Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said on April 11.

But this piles additional government subsidies on already flawed policies that promote the production of ethanol almost exclusively from corn. And if there were actually a demand from consumers for "domestically produced renewable transportation fuels," the owners of gas stations themselves would have a financial incentive to install the ethanol-blender pumps.

About 5 billion bushels of corn are taken off the market annually by the U.S. subsidies. (The 2011-2012 harvest from U.S. corn farmers is projected to be a record 13.5 billion bushels.) The impact on the price of food is significant, because the U.S. is by far the dominant producer and exporter of corn. Because it would effectively reduce demand for corn, the elimination of subsidized U.S. ethanol would have the equivalent impact on markets of boosting corn production in China by 75%, which would certainly lower food prices.

Ethanol does little to reduce the large percentage (about 60%) of our fuel that is imported because ethanol only provides about as much energy as the fossil fuels used to produce it. And if we take into account the incentive that higher corn prices give farmers in other countries to plow more land, the impact of ethanol on the environment is net-negative.

Addressing the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome recently, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that continued food price increases could lead to further destabilization in many countries. She called for the adoption of "better policies" to moderate food prices. A few other American politicians seem to agree: Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced the Ethanol Subsidy and Tariff Repeal Act to repeal the tariff on ethanol imports and eliminate the $6-billion-a-year tax break that subsidizes the corn ethanol industry. It's long overdue.

Colin A. Carter is professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the director of the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics at the University of California, Davis. Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.